LUDICROUS ESTIMATE OF MR. CANNING.
The Rev. Sydney Smith compares Mr. Canning in office to a fly in amber: “nobody cares about the fly: the only question is, how the devil did it get there?” “Nor do I,” continues Smith, “attack him for the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke, for fear it should flood a province. When he is jocular, he is strong; when he is serious, he is like Samson in a wig. Call him a legislator, a reasoner, and the conductor of the affairs of a great nation, and it seems to me as absurd as if a butterfly were to teach bees to make honey. That he was an extraordinary writer of small poetry, and a diner-out of the highest lustre, I do most readily admit. After George Selwyn, and perhaps Tickell, there has been no such man for the last half-century.”
THE AUTHORSHIP OF “WAVERLEY.”
Mrs. Murray Keith, a venerable Scotch lady, from whom Sir Walter Scott derived many of the traditionary stories and anecdotes wrought up in his novels, taxed him one day with the authorship, which he, as usual, stoutly denied. “What!” exclaimed the old lady, “d’ye think I dinna ken my ain groats among other folk’s kail?”
QUID PRO QUO.
Campbell relates:—“Turner, the painter, is a ready wit. Once at a dinner where several artists, amateurs, and literary men were convened, a poet, by way of being facetious, proposed as a toast the health of the painters and glaziers of Great Britain. The toast was drunk; and Turner, after returning thanks for it, proposed the health of the British paper-stainers.”